Cholera Spreads in Iraq, Aided by Lack of Clean Water

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aA9CkJtTFs1c&refer=europe

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Cholera is spreading in Iraq, where health authorities are struggling to provide enough clean drinking water to stem the potentially lethal water-borne disease, the World Health Organization said.

More than 30,000 people have suffered acute watery diarrhea, the main symptom of cholera, and 2,110 people have been diagnosed with the disease during the past month, WHO said yesterday in a statement on its Web site. About five of every 1,000 cases were fatal, the Geneva-based agency said.

Conflicts, sabotage and neglect since the 1991 Gulf War have damaged Iraq's water and sewerage treatment systems, leaving many Iraqis without clean drinking water, the World Bank said on its Web site. Thirty percent of Iraq's population has reliable access to safe water, the United Nations Children's Fund said in a statement yesterday.

``Provision of safe water is the highest priority in controlling an outbreak of cholera,'' WHO said in its statement. A shortage of chlorination products is hampering the government's efforts to provide enough clean drinking water to ensure the disease doesn't spread further, it said.

[EFerrari]

1. The only thing we haven't brought to those people is a plague of locusts.

Wait, that's not true.